“There is no more to be said,” he cried. “Our ears are ringing with words. Our hearts are full. I have here, prepared, a paper. Let those who for their own good and the good of their children are of a mind to sell, now sign it.”
Slowly, amidst moving and murmuring, the long paper, in the hands of one of the interpreters, made its deliberate rounds. Difficult signatures were inscribed in slow succession. Ancient, unaccustomed hands, deft enough with spear or bow, grasped awkwardly the pen and with it made their wavering “mark.”
Some there were of the old men, indeed the majority of them, who wrapping their blankets about them arose, and shambling, withdrew, aloof and soundless.
Like a shaken kaleidoscope the council broke up.
The inspector leaned back in his chair, a hand shielding the working of his mouth. His eyes searched the variegated, dissolving throng. The stenographer, still seated and playing with his idle pencil, shot him an understanding glance.
Later the Half-breed, standing on the board walk outside the trading store, a box of crackers in one hand, a paper containing pickles in the other, was lunching heartily. Suddenly he shifted everything into his left hand and strode down into the road. For in company with his wife and a young son the last of the speakers was passing.
The Half-breed’s extended hand grasped the Indian’s.
“I thank you for what you said,” he cried. “It was a noble thing to have done. You faced them all; the old timers, the chiefs, public opinion, prejudice. And you won. It was a brave act.”
The rugged, illuminated face was turned to him, the deep eyes rested squarely upon his. “You have perhaps forgotten,” he said. “You are younger than I am and too you have been for a long time with the whites—but I remember well the time when we were boys and our great head-chief Black Star used to sit and talk with us. Yes, you have perhaps forgotten,” he repeated, and his look, just touched with yearning, rested upon the younger man. “But I remember—I have never forgotten what he used to say to us. ‘Be brave,’ he would tell us. ‘That is the chief thing to learn; to do what each one believes is right, to speak for the right, everywhere, always. To be fearless of tongues, of persecution, to take counsel with our own minds and being sure to speak out surely. That,’ he always said to us, ‘and that only, is the man’s part.’”